New Hard Drive Takes Hard Ride To Show Benefits of Intel SSDs

Even before the Intel Centrino mobile technology mantra hit the scene in 2003, driving up laptop performance and increasing battery life required more than better, more efficient processors. It took a holistic approach of building efficiency into just about every component and feature — from the integrated wireless chips to smarter screens, better batteries and hard drives.

At IDF this week, I was eager to learn more about solid state drives (SSD), which are starting to become available in new laptops and other computers hitting the market. I grabbed an Intel SSD on the IDF Showcase floor, even juggle a few the wallet-sized solid state hard drives. They are nifty.

During Dadi Perlmutter’s Mobility technology keynote at IDF, we learned that Solid State Drives that can store 80 gigabytes of data are expected to go into production in 30 days with 160 gigabytes before the end of the year. The prices look a little higher than the hard drive in my new laptop, but the performance is higher, too — both in writing speed and lower energy consumption. These SSDs are filled with NAND memory chips and have no moving parts. They’re lighter than the spinning disk hard drive I have inside my HP work laptop, and they’re more rugged — that’s why I was allowed to juggle them…and even drop them several times…no harm done.

The new drives that will likely bring benefits to true mobile computing enthusiasts and companies who want their big server computers to be more energy efficient — with no moving parts, these SSDs run cool and require less electricity. If you’re using an SSD today, please let me know what how it’s workin’ for you.

The middle video shows an Intel SSD strapped to an off-road motocross bike racing in the Baja 500 track in Mexico, plus there two other videos on the benefits of Intel’s SSDs.